How to Cook Rice. Presented by the Louisiana Rice Exhibit, New Orleans

[New Orleans]; New York: [The Board of Trade; Printed by] H. R. Elliot & Co., Printers and Embossers, 1910. Stapled booklet (10.25 x 15.25 cm.), [14] unnumbered leaves; printed text decorated with red borders, on rectos only. Cover title: Recipes for Cooking Rice. Author information inferred from external evidence. Printer from rear panel of wrappers. ~ Evident FIRST EDITION. A promotional publication designed “to create a greater interest” in a foodstuff that had yet to become a staple in many parts of the United States. With a dozen recipes, including Gumbo Soup, Jambalaya, Belle Calas (fritters), Rice Pudding, Riz au Lait. ~ The phrase “Louisiana Rice Exhibit” can be found in reference to displays in the agricultural halls of world’s fairs – the World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1893), for instance, as well as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St. Louis, 1904) – but in the event the phrase is better understood not as an installation but as a program. The New Orleans Board of Trade had indeed exploited opportunities to educate the public by such means (cf A. C. Cantley, “Rice Display by Louisiana at World's Fair of 1904,” The Planter and Sugar Manufacturer 32, no. 7 [February 13, 1904], page 121), but it would have been highly unlikely for booklets such as How to Cook Rice to have been produced specifically for them without bearing any mark of the association. Moreover, Louisiana Rice Exhibits, so-named, were also staged at parish fairs, livestock shows, even horse races. Their visual aspect was meant to entrance and amuse. “The New Orleans Board of Trade made a very splendid exhibit,” a trade paper reported, “at the National Farm and Livestock Show with a display of all the products it handles, with the centerpiece a working model of a rice mill” (“Current Rice News Notes,” The Rice Journal and Southern Farmer 19, no. 12 (December 1916), page 33). ~ Founded in 1880, the Board itself coordinated, among many other activities, rice shipments from mills in Louisiana and, to a smaller extent, from eastern Texas and Arkansas, too. In this case, their printing contract with H. R. Elliot & Co. places the publication later than the Chicago Exposition, as this form of name was not in use until after 1900 (“The Manufacturing Stationer,” Walden’s Stationer and Printer 31 [Spring 1909], page 16). The date of issue proposed here rests on reports that the Board of Trade distributed booklets in or perhaps slightly before 1910 (a note, for example, from the American Poultry World recorded that recipes from the Louisiana Rice Exhibit of New Orleans had been received (1, no. 5 [March 1910], pages 354-355). ~ Interior clean and bright. Stapled in ivory wrappers with gilt illustration of rice plants overseen by a pelican (in honor of the Pelican State). Near fine. [OCLC locates four copies; Uhler 252; New Orleans Culinary History Group, page 152; not in Bitting, Brown or Cagle].